


you make me ache less

by judlane



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, graphic detail of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judlane/pseuds/judlane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it aches to not exist. </p><p>but there are times when Noah finds himself aching less and less</p>
            </blockquote>





	you make me ache less

**Author's Note:**

> this is just me playing around with Noah's character and my somewhat take on things. mostly to just write about Noah angst because i miss him. also, this entire thing is pretty much unedited and i'm sorry about that, but it's mostly just me trying to find my style of writing!  
> thank you for reading

It aches to not exist.

That’s the only way Noah can explain it. It aches. He wants to feel Blue’s hair between his translucent fingertips but he can’t. He wants to feel his body hit the ground when Ronan throws him out of the window but he can’t. He used to feel a lot of things. He loved the burn of the cement against his knees when he lost his balance on his board. His body thumping along with the beat in his car. Warm hands on his and lips and the soft slide of sheets. He misses it.

It aches to not exist.

He tries to tell them - his family that often forgets him more than not. He wants to reach out and wrap his hand around Adam’s arm, pull him close and tell him what it’s like. What it’s like to be standing in the middle of the room and no one seeing you. To be speaking and no one hearing you. To want to hold and love and feel but you’re hollow. You’re the thin-linen curtains that filter out the sunlight dully. You’re the misty window that people wipe at with a sleeve-covered heel. You’re temporary.

When they find his bones, he wants to curl into himself, out of shame. _He was my friend. He was my friend._ But now he had found true friends, friends who let him play with their hair and blow cold hair against their necks. They didn’t smile at him one moment and the next, when he was looking down to check the compass, crack him in the side of his head with a skateboard.

He remembered hitting the ground, sprawled out and lurching. Something wet was soaking into his collar. Something warm and red. He’d blinked rapidly, trying to clear his spot-ridding vision, before looking up at Whelk.

Whelk had been stone-faced and cold, jaw clenched harshly. Noah’s skateboard was splattered with blood. His blood.

He’d heard his voice catch in the chilly air, fragile and small. “Whelk?”

He’d saw his best friend blink once, twice, before lifting the board high over his head and down onto Noah’s.

Then he was watching Whelk toss his skateboard away, wipe his hands on his pants, grimace, and look around as if waiting for something to happen. He saw his body, limp and defaced on the ground, and wanted to vomit.

_He killed me. He killed me._

It was terribly lonely after that. Before he met Gansey and Ronan and Adam and Blue. His wonderful friends. He’d stayed by his body until the birds came from the skies because he couldn’t handled watching the first testing peck. He’d sat in his old car, crying nonexistent tears until he thought he should’ve filled up the inside.

He’d never gone home. He couldn’t do that to himself. He couldn’t take the chance of his family seeing him. He didn’t want to haunt them.

So Noah had wandered and found freedom in attending Aglionby classes, pretending that he was counting the clock until he could go home. He pretended a lot back then.

And then he’d felt the desk beside him creak and a rich voice ask him, “Are you new around here? I’m Gansey!”, a golden-tanned hand held aloft for him to grasp.

He’d stared at it, then stared at the boy - Gansey. He was looking at him, teeth white against his skin. He had a nice smile. A weird name but a nice smile. Noah had humored himself with shaking hands with Gansey, waiting for his to ghost through the other boy’s but it hadn’t. It had been solid. It was warm. It was real. 

Gansey had a firm handshake.

He fell in love with each of them. Slowly, like how his body had rotted and the grime collected on his car. He fell in love with their absurdness and pain. He wanted to wrap them in his arms all at once and tell them this - that you make me feel real, like I am here, like I have a heart that beats out emotions through my rib cage which rests in an overgrown patch of grass.

But he could only show them in snatches, in the fleeting moments where he was solid then not. He’d tried to tell them, and he think he succeeded at some length. He could still feel the coolness of Blue’s tears.

And he showed them in his last moments, when he could find his voice before he whited out into the oblivion.

I love you. I love you all. You make me happy. You make me laugh. I was alone for seven years, yet you all found me. You found me broken and dead, yet you loved me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I wish it could be different. I wish I could change it all. I wish I had met all of you instead of that rich-to-poor boy gone mad who broke my skull with my skateboard. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you all.

Instead, all he could say was,

“Don’t throw it away. Goodbye.”


End file.
